Timeline

Heritage classified

Key figures

Origin and history

The house located on 5 rue de l'Eglise in Molsheim, in the Lower Rhine, is a building of the first half of the seventeenth century, typical of the Alsatian architecture of the Renaissance. Its sandstone ground floor and wooden panel floor with corbellation illustrate the constructive techniques of the time. The gable, decorated with volutes and obelisks in sandstone, recalls that of the house of 15 rue de Strasbourg (dated 1618) and of the house of the Jesuits of the early seventeenth century. Some windows have been redesigned, but decorative elements such as the crosses of Saint Andrew and the rautes remain.

In 1783, this house became the cradle of the Congregation of the Sisters of Divine Providence (later called Ribeauvillé), founded by Father Louis Kremp and the dressmaker Madeleine Ehrhardt. They set up a free school for rural girls, with the support of the municipality which made the building available. This place marked the local educational and religious history before its classification as a historical monument in 1930.

The building retains traces of later transformations, like a door in the middle of a former high cellar, converted into an entrance. At the corner of a posterior landing, a vestige of medieval masonry attests to an earlier occupation of the site. The facades and roofs, protected since 1930, bear witness to its heritage importance in the urban landscape of Molsheim, a city of the Great East marked by its Alsatian heritage.

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